Pops Swings Into High Gear With Jazzy Opening Concert

Ah, Summer Pops and the listening is easy. Swaying palm fronds, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, good friends and the San Diego Symphony playing “lite” music amid the alfresco evening splendor of Mission Bay’s Hospitality Point. Is this heaven or what?

The symphony’s erstwhile classical musicians donned white and black semi-formal gear Wednesday to open the orchestra’s 12-week summertime binge of popular concerts.

This week’s series, continuing tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., features the Dukes of Dixieland, a New Orleans sextet specializing in traditional jazz. It marks the symphony’s return to its annual summer pops concerts after a one-year hiatus.

Last summer, in the absence of the symphony, the musicians put on their own highly respectable, and financially successful, nine-week pops series at Hospitality Point. The players made some site improvements, trying a new orchestra shell that improved acoustic qualities. This year, the quality of the amplified sound is even better, approaching something like high fidelity.

The reasons: The symphony is using more microphones and placing them differently, a symphony spokesman said. And it’s testing a still another voluminous orchestra shell, which several musicians said seemed to improve the quality of the sound.

There were 2,121 pops devotees on hand for the Pops opener. That would be a virtual sellout in Symphony Hall, but there were plenty of empties in the 3,600-seat Pops site. Some of the concert-goers brought picnics; others availed themselves of the products offered by the symphony’s caterer.

The music for these concerts is, well, easy to listen to. There isn’t much of a chance to hear the orchestra on this program, however, which plays only two pieces alone: Glinka’s overture to the opera “Ruslan and Ludmila”--a surprising choice for a jazz program--and the second movement of Gottschalk’s symphonic poem, “Night in the Tropics,” a delightful Caribbean mood piece by this 19th-Century New Orleanian.

The orchestra, led by Carl Hermanns, who conducted the Cab Calloway concert this spring, opened the concert with a tentative sound--playing correctly but safely. After intermission, the band seemed to hit a groove, the trombones making particularly bold statments in “Midnight in Moscow.”

Despite the fine quality of the outdoor sound amplification, it was difficult to get a sense of the overall ensemble as technicians tweaked the sound levels throughout the concert. Mainly the sound system focused on the trumpet, trombone and clarinet soloists in the Dukes of Dixieland.

The Dukes opened with “South Rampart Street Parade” and sailed professionally through such standards as “Basin Street Blues,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

A swing version of “The Entertainer,” an arrangement of the “Cantina Suite” from “Star Wars” and a touching performance of “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans” were highlights.

Harry Watters played some funky trombone solos, especially on “Dixieland One Step.”

Band leader Frank Trapani put his trumpet in the stratosphere and rarely brought it anywhere near Earth.

Clarinetist Michael Waddell, who also played alto sax, displayed impressive skill as a reed man, but his elegant riffing did not linger in the mind.

String bassist Richard Payne, pianist-vocalist Phamous Lambert and drummer L. J. Schenck constitute the Duke’s rock-solid rhythm section. The only complaint about Lambert’s scruffy, back-alley voice is that it was heard too little.

But something was missing from this concert, namely the soul of Dixieland. The Dukes’ pieces seemed cut and dried--flashy arrangements accompanied by little playing from the heart. And, if this program is any indication of the state of jazz arrangements for orchestra, it’s a sorry state indeed. The orchestrations made pitiful use of the orchestra.